Chinese Zoo Animals Monitored For Earthquake Prediction 29
An anonymous reader writes: Seismologists in Nanjing have set up seven observation centers at zoos and animal parks in the region to see if animals can predict when an earthquake may strike. At least three kinds of animals in the earthquake stations should corroborate each other when bizarre behavior occurs, said Zhao Bing, head of Nanjing earthquake monitoring. Discovery reports: "According to one English-language Chinese news outlet, 'At Banqiao ecological park the behavior of around 200 pigs, 2,000 chickens, and fish in a 15-hectare pond are closely monitored to detect signals of an earthquake. Breeders here create daily reports regarding animal behavior for Nanjing's seismological departments.' The news report noted that the park relies 'mainly on employees closely watching the animals' for seismological significance."
Re: (Score:2)
pigs and chickens in a pond?
They have a zoo with pigs and chickens?
"Mummy I want to see the cows"
"No son, were're going to see the sheep, the cows are too dangerous"
"Mummy can we go to the farm next week and see the lions and zebras?"
Re: (Score:1)
They have a zoo with pigs and chickens?
They have a zoo with a yellow dog in a wig being passed off as a lion: http://edition.cnn.com/2013/08/16/world/asia/china-zoo-dog-lion/
Maybe fake animals can predict fake quakes?
Re: (Score:2)
We have "zoos" with pigs, sheep, cows etc in Britain. They're called city farms, and they exist so children who live in a city can see what their food looks like before it appears in Tesco.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
http://www.timeout.com/london/... [timeout.com]
Re:correlation != causation (Score:4, Insightful)
Do a scientific experiment (or maybe the whole point of the article is a hit piece against the Chinese zoo).
Simulate P-wave in controlled environment to see if the animals can detect them.
Otherwise, what they're doing with observing animals is not meaningful.
I guess if one is able to simulate a P-wave, it would be trivial to build a (technological) detector for P-waves (as in fact exists already in e.g. the Earthquake Early Warning systems of Japan [wikipedia.org]). They seem to be banking on some anecdotal stories that animals are able to warn of an impending earthquake, in which a P-wave would not have been emitted yet and a P-wave detector thus useless. I say if that is the case, then such monitoring would be eminently useful, as it would either debunk or lend credence to such anecdotes, and if the latter, make a good case for further investigation into the mechanism at work that enable that ability in animals - which might then lead to "technological" detectors of such hypothetical phenomenon.
Re: (Score:2)
That would not be a good experiment. Changes in animal behavior before earthquakes, and I have seen this myself in Asia, might be triggered by some phenomenon we have not researched yet. Testing with a variety of natural quakes, occurring at different distances and depths, would allow us to smoke out any such effect.
Re: (Score:2)
As always, the hard part is getting the data into the computer, which probably can't yet reliably tell the difference between an agitated warthog and an excited warthog, except under extremely controlled conditions; I bet you could do something slick just with audio signal processing if you had one warthog alone in a sound studio, but in the real world...
They said they were monitoring pigs, I'm trying to spruce it up with the warthogs
Spiders, frogs, birds also precognize earthquakes. (Score:1)
In many countries, people are reluctant to evict spiders from houses, because the spontaneous fleeing of spiders is supposed to to forecast an incoming earthquake. The webbing allegedly acts as a seismic antenna. Frogs and birds also exhibit confused or agitated behaviour previous to earthquakes, birds allegedly due to their sensitivity to geo-magnetism, used in their navigation skills. These signs are however, rather sybillic and only become obvious ex-post facto.
Thus, close monitoring of the Animal Kingdo
People predicting earthquakes? (Score:2)
The news report noted that the park relies 'mainly on employees closely watching the animals' for seismological significance."
How do they know what is significant? I assume that after earthquakes in the past some zoo employee reported that he/she saw the animals behaving strangely but didn't realize they were trying to tell him an earthquake was imminent. This in the country that uses rhinoceros horns and bear gall bladders as aphrodisiacs.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, that's why you do ... research!
The hypothesis is "animals can predict earthquakes and we can detect it because they behaved 'funny'". Well, we need to find out what 'funny' is. So you're g
Benefits (Score:1)
I'll just leave this here... (Score:2)
Chickens (Score:2)
I'm assuming those 2,000 chickens are for feeding to carnivores and not part of the exhibit. Chickens, pigs and fish... Oh my!
some successes with this in the 1970s (Score:3)
Wouldn't it be cheaper? (Score:1)